The movie Christopher Nolan was inspired by but didn’t understand: “Sort of a remarkable feat”
What is it that separates an average filmmaker from an extraordinary one? Of course, there are many factors that play a significant role, but one of the most important is the ability to carve out a whole world that feels completely immersive and unique. The most successful filmmakers manage to hone cinematic worlds that feel as though they couldn’t be replicated anywhere else, which is something that Christopher Nolan has attempted to do throughout his career.
From a very young age, Nolan has shown a deep love for cinema, making films when he was in university (despite studying English) before finally being able to create his first feature, Following, in 1998. Nolan used as many friends and family members as possible to help him bring his vision to life – as well as a low budget – but the film was still a success, proving his innate talent for directing.
It led Nolan to bigger projects, of course, starting with Memento, which was released two years later. The film was a hit, praised for its unconventional use of form. While Nolan has since made much larger films, like the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, and Oppenheimer, many people still love Memento, which remains an indie classic.
When Nolan started out, he knew he wanted to create films that totally enveloped the viewer, leaving them wrapped up in an unshakeable narrative. Talking to NPR, Nolan once explained, “The way in which you remember movies is very similar to the way in which you remember dreams.” Memento, a film concerned with memory, provided the perfect cinematic world for audiences to latch onto and remember.
The director added, “And every now and again, you see a film that taps that in a way. You know, I think Memento, for a lot of people, sort of bled off the page, if you like, or off the strip of film running through the projector and built a bigger world in people’s minds.”
This is something he learned from other filmmakers, like David Lynch. “I think the films of David Lynch have always done that incredibly well over the years,” he admitted. Lynch’s movies are known for being dreamlike, often experimenting with non-linear or abstract narrative techniques that confuse yet enthrall the viewer. “They have a dream logic,” he explained. “I remember seeing Lost Highway, for example, and not really understanding the film at all.” Yet, Nolan soon realised that he couldn’t shake the film from his mind.
“A couple of weeks later, remembering the film the way I would remember one of my own dreams, and that suddenly felt like a sort of remarkable feat that Lynch had achieved in terms of mapping a dream into the space of a motion picture, and vice versa,” Nolan revealed.
Lost Highway is rather different to your average Nolan movie, but it was this compelling, dreamy, unforgettable aspect that stuck with the filmmaker. Lynch’s film, released in 1997, is a thriller inspired by neo-noir cinema, which sees a couple’s life transformed after they begin receiving VHS tapes of themselves. It doesn’t take long for the narrative to descend into chaos as doppelgangers, strange men, and murder come to tear their world apart.
